Stanford University

Policy Analysis

Economic, social, and security implications of East Asia's demographic transition

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Asia’s demographic landscape is changing in a big way. Japan’s population is shrinking, as people are living longer, marrying later, and choosing to have fewer or no children. Korea is moving in the same direction, while China and the countries of South and Southeast Asia face similar issues in the coming decades. As this takes place, more people are moving to, from, and across Asia for job, education, and marriage opportunities.

These demographic changes present policymakers with new challenges and questions, including: What are the interrelationships between population aging and key macroeconomic variables such as economic growth? How will it impact security? What are the effects on employment policy and other national institutions? How have patterns of migration affected society and culture? What lessons can Asia, the United States, and Europe learn from one another to improve the policy response to population aging?

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) focused its third annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue on addressing the possible economic, social, and security implications of Asia’s unprecedented demographic transition. Thirty scholars, government figures, journalists, and other opinion leaders from Stanford, the United States, and countries across the Asia-Pacific region gathered September 8–9, 2011, in Kyoto, Japan, to discuss key issues related to the question of demographic change.

Comparative Demographics and Policy Responses

Japan’s shrinking workforce calls for labor policy changes, stressed presenters during the opening Dialogue session. Stanford Center for Population Research director Shripad Tuljapurkar stated that Japan’s population could decrease by as much as 25 percent and that its government has a window of approximately 40 years in which to act. In describing Japan’s demographic shift, Ogawa Naohiro, director of the Nihon University Population Research Institute, also emphasized the importance of good financial education for individuals as life expectancy increases.

Macroeconomic Implications

Economists Masahiko Aoki and Cai Fang addressed changes to East Asia’s economic landscape. Aoki, an FSI senior fellow, spoke of the transition from agriculture to industry that has occurred at different stages in Japan, Korea, and China and of the increasing cost of human capital that has followed. Cai, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences labor and population expert, stated that after several decades of industrial growth China is now at a turning point in terms of its global competitiveness.

Labor and Migration

Scott Rozelle, codirector of Stanford’s Rural Education Action Program (REAP), opened the next day with a discussion of China’s rural human capital investment. Offering Mexico’s situation after the mid-1990s peso crisis as a comparison, he emphasized the immediate need for allocating more health and education resources to China’s rural areas. Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh, president of Tri Viet University, discussed the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of labor migration—a growing trend in Asia—and advocated that governments factor it more into their foreign policy development.

Security

The security impact of Asia’s demographic transition will take several decades to understand, but it will eventually lead to the need for significant policy re-strategization, stated Yu Myung Hwan, Korea’s former minister of foreign affairs and trade, during the closing Dialogue session. He suggested focusing on impacts that could result from the major changes taking place in fertility, urbanization, and migration. Concurring with many of Yu’s views, Stanford’s Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow Michael H. Armacost also noted the current lack of literature on the link between security and demography. In addition, he emphasized the need for the United States to continue pursuing good relations with China and Russia during this time of transition.

“Low fertility rates are not because women are all out there working. In fact, a number of countries have lots of females in the labor force and have achieved a resurgence of fertility. Achieving work-life balance is important, not just for women, but for men as well, and might play a role in lessening the gap in life expectancy between men and women.”

-Karen Eggleston, Director, Asia Health Policy Program

Throughout the event, Dialogue participants unanimously acknowledged the serious challenges facing policymakers as they look for ways to meet the evolving needs of individuals, families, and organizations. The demographic outlook is not entirely gloomy, however. Numerous participants also pointed to the potential for exciting advances and innovations in technology and international cooperation.

As in previous years, the event concluded with a lively public symposium and reception attended by students from Stanford and local universities, Shorenstein APARC guests and affiliates, and members of the general public. Speaking during the reception, Kadokawa Daisaku, mayor of Kyoto, and Kim Hyong-O, member and former speaker of the Korean National Assembly, acknowledged the significance of the Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue as a forum for addressing issues of mutual importance to the United States and Asia.

The Dialogue is made possible through the generosity of the City of Kyoto, FSI, and Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko. To read the final report from this and previous Dialogues, visit the event series page below.

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A worker stands on steel rods at a superblock construction site in Jakarta in February 2010. Increasing urbanization is one of many aspects of Asia's demographic change.
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India's Multiple Revolutions

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Abstract: 

India has been in the throes of four major transformations since the 1980s. They are in the arenas of foreign policy, economic development strategies, the process of social mobilization and the growing challenges to Indian secularism. Exogenous shocks, in considerable measure, explain the dramatic and closely linked changes in the realms of foreign and security policies. The spurt in social mobilization, however, stemmed from mostly domestic sources and specifically the deepening of adult franchise.  It represents one important facet of the maturation of India’s democracy. Finally, the very success of social mobilization, in part, accounts for the assault on Indian secularism. The first two, of course represent conscious policy choices. The second two, however, can be traced to a complex interplay of various social forces. The evolution of these four features of India’s democracy will, in large measure, shape the future of the country in this new century.

Speaker Bio: 

Sumit Ganguly is a professor of political science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has previously taught at James Madison College of Michigan State University, Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Ganguly has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a Guest Scholar at the Center for Cooperative Monitoring in Albuquerque and a Visiting Scholar at the German Institute for International and Area Studies in Hamburg.

He was also the holder of the Ngee Ann Chair in International Politics at the Rajaratnam School for International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in the spring term of 2010.  Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Professor Ganguly serves on the editorial boards of Asian Affairs, Asian Security, Asian Survey, Current History, the Journal of Democracy, International Security and Security Studies. A specialist on the contemporary politics of South Asia is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 20 books on the region.  

His most recent books are India Since 1980 (with Rahul Mukherji), published by Cambridge University Press and Asian Rivalries: Conflict, Escalation and Limitations on Two-Level Games (with William Thompson) published by Stanford University Press. He is currently at work on a new book, Deadly Impasse: India-Pakistan Relations at the Dawn of a New Century for Cambridge University Press.

His article on corruption in India was just published in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy, and he is currently writing a new book with Bill Thompson entitled The State of India (for Columbia University Press) which seeks to assess India's prospects and limitations of emerging as a great power.

CISAC Conference Room

Sumit Ganguly Professor of Political Science Speaker Indiana University, Bloomington
Seminars

Building Institutions under Foreign Occupation: Police Reform in Colonial Taiwan versus the Philippines

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Abstract:

What explains the success and failure of institution-building under foreign occupations? Reo Matsuzaki, post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, examines this question by comparing the Japanese colonization of Taiwan and the American colonization of the Philippines, which produced contrasting institutional legacies despite the presence of similar initial conditions. He argues that two variables jointly play a significant role in determining variation in institution-building outcomes: the degree of discretionary power afforded to the occupational administration by its home government; and the strength of resistance to the institution-building effort by local elites in the occupied territory. He will present his research on foreign-imposed police reform in colonial Taiwan and the Philippines, and discuss the implications of his findings for contemporary state-building missions. 

Speaker Bio:

Reo Matsuzaki is a 2011-2012 post-doctoral fellow at CDDRL with a PhD in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His dissertation examines variation in institution-building outcomes within foreign occupations, particularly in the areas of police and education, through a comparison of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945) and the American occupation of the Philippines (1898-1941). While at CDDRL, he will be working to turn his dissertation into a book manuscript, as well as on a project examining the role of community policing in counter-insurgency campaigns.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Reo Matsuzaki Post-doctoral Fellow, 2011-2012 Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Building a Rule of Law in Afghanistan

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Karl Eikenberry is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (FSI).   Within FSI he is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and an affiliated researcher with the Europe Center.

Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, where he led the civilian surge directed by President Obama to reverse insurgent momentum and set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.

Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General.  His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.

He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office while studying at the  United Kingdom Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service and Department of the Army Meritorious Civilian Service Awards.  His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Czech Republic Meritorious Cross, Hungarian Alliance Medal, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relation, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association.  He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy, and on Chinese ancient military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.  He has a commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving.  He is married to Ching Eikenberry.

CISAC Conference Room

Karl Eikenberry Payne Distinguished Lecturer Speaker FSI
Seminars

In the Middle of the Storm: Development and Governance in the Arab World

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The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law,  The Safadi Foundation USA, The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE),

and the Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center

invite you to the launch of the

 

Safadi-Stanford Initiative for Policy Innovation

 

 

9:00-9:30 AM

Welcoming Remarks by Michael Van Dusen, Executive Vice President, Woodrow Wilson Center; and His Excellency, Mohammad Safadi, Minister of Finance, Republic of Lebanon

 

9:30-10:45 AM

PANEL I: Regional Arab Reform

Tamara Wittes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs

Mara Rudman, Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Middle East, USAID

Lina Khatib, Co-Founder, Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, CDDRL, Stanford

Miriam Allam, Safadi Scholar First Runner Up and Economist, OECD

 

10:45-11:00 AM

Coffee Break

 

11:00-12:15 PM

PANEL II: Energy Reform and Economic Development in the Arab World

Robert D. Hormats, Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs

Inger Andersen, Vice-President, MENA, The World Bank

John D. Sullivan, Executive Director, Center for International Private Enterprise

Katarina Uherova Hasbani, Safadi Scholar of the Year

 

12:30-2:00 PM

Keynote lunch with Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund introduced by Ambassador Joseph Gildenhorn, Chairman, Woodrow Wilson Center Board of Trustees,and His Excellency Mohammad Safadi, Minister of Finance, Republic of Lebanon introduced by Lara Alameh, Executive Director, Safadi Foundation USA

 

To watch the live webcast of the conference, please click here. 

 

Download pdf

6th Floor Flom Auditorium

Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC

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